J! THE ::L NEW rOI\ IiI J.E _ -' ' ii m :. ,.- 'í':r\ '-- J .... --------- rø :: If':: Fro / J"\' \ . . \ .. o ::::::-- , '\ ; 0 0 . . 0 -" . ". ,,- THE, TALK OF THE TOWN Notes and C omnzent F ULL as our life was this winter, our cup ranneth not over, as it usually does, an d we discovered the other day what was lacking. In all the excitement we had been neglecting to read the social notes from Florida in the Times, which had been our custom for years past, and we'd drifted in to a wrong frame of mind. Well, the season isn't quite over and, goodness alive, only the other day the guests at Mrs. Hamil- ton Pell's home in Palm Beach includ- ed Sir George and Lady Bettesworth- Piggott, and both Mrs. H. Marcellus Gallop and Mrs. Noel Marshall See- burg were there as well. Others were Mr. and Mrs. J eremiáh D. Maguire, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Whole an, Mr. and Mrs. W. Hall Headington, Mrs. Frances Wann Randolph, Mr. E. Leon- ard Beard, Jr., and Miss Josephine Kelley. On top of that, Mrs. Charles G Mueller of Philadelphia was among those entertaining at the final fashion luncheon of the season at the Surf Club in Miami Beach and those who also gave parties there included Mrs. Oscar Doo- ly, Jr. Oh, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Criqui of Buffalo were hosts at a cocktail party and dinner at the Fla- mingo Hotel and Mrs. James E. Baum and the Princess Irbain-Khan Kaplan- off were at the tombola luncheon at the Everglades Club. Cups full, friends? Take it away, MacArthur. T o the extent that priorities hamper travel, they limit what anthropolo- gists call the courting range-the dis- tance a youth can cover when spring is in his blood. The results of this are un- predictable but fun to speculate about. Let us suppose that a hardy youth named SWIfty, a Bridgeport munitions worker, is physically attracted to a girl named Margie, who lives with her parents in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Now, it just happens that the bus and train connec- tions between the two places are highly cOlnplicated. Swifty has a snazzy little roadster but no tires, and the only alter- native is a stiff six-hour hike. Well, one Saturday evening Swifty limps up to Margie's door; it was such a nice day, he says, that he thought he'd stroll over and surprise her. He just wanted to say hello, and then he'll be starting back. Now, do Margie's parents allow them- sel yes to be governed by the conventions of a time when Swifty was only a half- hour's drive from Bridgeport? Or do they decide that, in the best interests of national defense, if not of their daugh- ter, Swifty had better get a good night's sleep and a hot breakfast before he hits the road? The answer will determine whether or not Leon Henderson goes down in history as the man responsible for the revival of bundling. W E were pleased, or at least not dis- pleased, when the subway ad- vertising cards, branching out from a straight cough-drop policy, began to admit minor bits of unsponsored jour- nalisln-cartoons, photographs of pretty girls, Ripley-like odd facts, and whatnot. We wouldn't have been so complacent if we'd known where all this was leading. In a new series devoted to household hints, the editors have so completely lost touch with the subway set as to suggest " ./1/ ) "- t' A .} . < . . \ ;( (.,f' I " . / X' t -; , ! - tr ( . . '{.,'?: f : ,'" . - 'I' I J ":'1.,. ...' 1 ,t'f'. \, _ """'f \ "r_ ,"' "v . , ". \ .,{-..... . I, . >':. ._ . """ , \' .' l, ' I : .':::' \ " 'I"\'" .... f .: à' ) : fj / ::":- ,...,. :/ A' ....?:, \. ,., . - ,; \ -' I 'I. l1 , --;,> ". . ,\ ;;/' j , \ -. ., ' . \ ::, ,. J "':' ',' v, ., . "\1 1 /IJ ":'; " uf) ' -.' .6!. -" . -<-. ...... . \, " o".".. . - '<'. '). ' .:-' ,I ... .' -:-." ...........-- ,,- .-' -- ...- - ..- -- in one card that occasionally it is fun to "dine informally." Another starts out, "If you have but one bathroom..." There's no "if" about it; we have but one bathroom, and we'll be damned if we'll apologize to the subway for it. "That is this, anyway-propaganda for the seven-and-a-half-cent fare? We might point out, without suggesting comparisons, that our lone bathroom is as neat as a new pin, and that it's not locked up every night at seven o'clock. T HE jumho historical novel would seem, at first glance, to have reached something of an impasse. The other day a 963-page job about Lady Hamilton came out, and with it the pub- lishers issued a good-sized pamphlet called "Index of Characters," full of nothing but historical sketches of the fi ve hundred and thirty personages in the book, from Abercorn, John James Hamilton) 9th Earl, to Zurlo, Capece, Cardinal and Archbishop of Naples. Somehow both the book and its annex fell into our unsteady hands, and we admit to doing the cowardly, if not par- ticularly surprising, thing: we skimmed through the novel and read the pam- phlet from cover to cover. We realized then that the historical novel has passed through a complete life cycle in our time: bIrth, early growth, flowering, decay, and the death that is a new birth. It began with one historical character, a tiny seed from the Encyclopædia Britannica, and got longer and longer, . acquired more and more characters, piled action on action, passion on passion, until finally it burst like a milkweed pod and scattered little seeds of new his- torical novels, five hundred and thirty of them, all over the circulating-library trade. \Ve've staked out Zurlo, Capece, for ourself already. T HE irresistible force of science has .. been meeting the immovable body of the football player recently, and we are not at all sure which group has come